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So cue the US telling developing countries "hey you can grow coffee instead of coca/opium and make a good living", a large number of farmers growing coffee, the
by cletus 6y ago
So cue the US telling developing countries "hey you can grow coffee instead of coca/opium and make a good living", a large number of farmers growing coffee, the supply gets flooded, prices drop and the farmers switch back to the coca/opium harvests that no doubt made them much more money anyway.
The circle of life.
- jeffbee 6y agoI would have thought that artificial opioids like fentanyl would have wrecked the poppy market already.
- tehjoker 6y agoI recall reading it's several orders of magnitude more potent and its typical use is elephant tranquilizer. Far higher potency means it's easy for a small mistake in measurement to result in a really high dose. I would imagine that seems risky even to people accustomed to heroin.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoI don't think heroin users get a choice. My understanding is a lot of the street supply is already cut with fentanyl.
- Applejinx 6y agoRecovering addict here, couple decades clean: yes, that's been true for years. If you are in touch with the using-addict population, for instance you're in recovery and participate in meetings, you'd be certain of this. It's weird when maybe a double-digit percentage of the people you know, wind up dead (and this is before covid). When you include people you know, upset because people THEY know have overdosed and died, then yeah: the effects of fentanyl are pretty damn apparent. People will not be addicts cautiously. Even if they think that's what they're being, they're mistaken.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- moistly 6y ago> its typical use is elephant tranquilizer Which leads me to ask: how many flippin’ elephants are being tranquilized, that we need so much of this stuff being manufactured?! Poor creatures.
- perl4ever 6y agoWith terminal cancer, the progression I've seen is first oxycontin pills, then fentanyl patches, and then liquid morphine.
- mikestew 6y agoAccording to TFA, sourcing coffee isn’t the problem. It was in the first paragraph in case you missed it on your first reading.
- throwaway823882 6y agoDoesn't matter. If they can't export/ship/sell it, then they don't make money, so they go back to growing drugs.
- wobbly_bush 6y ago> Marex Spectron this month increased its estimate for a global coffee deficit to 10.7 million bags in 2021-22, compared with its previous projection of 8 million bags, citing lower Brazilian arabica output after adverse weather damaged crops. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a report that if production in Central America doesn’t improve in coming years, the market will enter a structural deficit given the rebound in demand
- bregma 6y agoThere's a shortage of shipping containers for the cocaine and opium, too.
- p1necone 6y agoHow often are those shipped in containers as opposed to DIY submarines?
- angry_octet 6y agoOh all the time. But global freight is so huge, only a tiny portion can be checked. It has to make its way to a shipping source before it can enter the legitimate supply chain though. Although 3D x-rays are used extensively for scanning freight, it it still easy to smuggle high value product.